Literature and Writings
Gaskell had a fascination with language and was an expert on the Lancashire dialect. Extracts from his lectures on dialect were published in the Examiner, and the 1854 edition of Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, was accompanied by his notes on dialect. He also published numerous pamphlets and sermons, and wrote or translated over seventy hymns, some of which are still sung.
His poem, 'Sketches among the Poor, No. 1' (co-written with his wife in the manner of Crabbe), was published in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1837, and his poetry collection Temperance Rhymes (1839) won the approval of Wordsworth. His poetry varied in form, but always employed plain language and attempted sensitive portrayals of characters drawn from the working classes. The poem 'Manchester Song' supplies two of the chapter epigraphs to Mary Barton.
Read more about this topic: William Gaskell
Famous quotes containing the words literature and/or writings:
“Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers—such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)
“If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be “To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one’s own writings in translation.””
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)